Accessibility of the PM

A pre-election interview with four political editors as done at The Pantograph Punch. All quite interesting, and one thing I wanted to highlight in the interview with Brent Edwards:

How do you rate the access to politicians in New Zealand?

In New Zealand in the main we have great access to politicians. If you think of the Prime Minister during a sitting week, he has a post-Cabinet news conference on a Monday which is for anywhere up to half an hour or more. We can then grab him on his way to his caucus meeting on Tuesday morning, on the way to Parliament on Tuesday afternoon, we can grab him again on Wednesday afternoon on the way to Parliament, and the rest of the time when he’s out around the country you probably have three or four stand-ups.

So that is a total of seven or eight media conferences or stand ups a week. And our stand ups involve questions and answers  not just photo ops.

It is a good thing our head of government is so accessible to the media, and through them the public. I doubt there are many other countries which would have the same.

In the US Barack Obama averages just 20 press conferences a year. On top of that around 26 short q+a. Compare that the NZ where it is around 46 press conferences and 300 or so media standups.

In the UK there appear to be seven to nine media conferences or standups a month.